Re: Stylesheet association

Dave Peterson writes:
| At 6:09 PM 3/12/97, Terry Allen wrote:
| >                                                      <empty/>
| >is one of the worst warts on the present spec, inviting error
| >and difficult to explain ("<IMG> works fine in HTML, <anchor>
| >works fine in SGML, what's the problem?"  "Conformance with SGML.")
| 
| Cheap shot?  It's not conformance with SGML that's the problem.
| It's that with HTML we have, if not a fixed set of element types,
| at least a short-term-fixed set of element types declared EMPTY.
| Since those types are known ahead of time by name, that much of
| the "HTML DTD" is built into every HTML parser.  It's the fact
| that XML wants to continue to permit EMPTY element types, doesn't
| want to pre-specify their names, and wants to parse without reference
| to a DTD that forces XML to differentiate between the tag for empty elements
| that don't use an end-tag and the start-tag of elements that do use
| end-tags.

Not a cheap shot at all.  My point is exactly that an XML instance
without a style sheet, an applet that interprets the semantics of
the GIs, a DTD, or some other document that collects that and
similiar information is uninterpretable.  As some other piece is
required to interpret XML markup, the opportunity exists to insert
a summary of EMPTY GIs there - an idea mooted last Fall in the 
context of PIs.  

I am more concerned about packaging and delivery in general than
with <empty/>; I brought it up only to show that packaging and 
delivery have implications for aspects of XML that have already
been decided - but could be reconsidered before everyone's feet
are set in concrete.  Now's the time.



Regards,
  Terry Allen    Electronic Publishing Consultant    tallen[at]sonic.net
       specializing in Web publishing, SGML, and the DocBook DTD 
                   http://www.sonic.net/~tallen/
  A Davenport Group Sponsor:  http://www.ora.com/davenport/index.html

Received on Friday, 14 March 1997 11:27:50 UTC